ugh....users of the english language, read this.

Discussion in 'Free Thoughts' started by The Devil Inside, Aug 25, 2006.

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  1. Athelwulf

    Athelwulf Rest in peace Kurt... Registered Senior Member

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    It can. Just, it's such a subtle distinction, and one made in so few languages that an average English speaker might be aware of, that it's not a distinction we're used to. So for us, it's difficult to create a voiced, aspirated plosive.

    Also, I'm only aware of aspiration in voiceless plosives in English. Which phonemic combinations were you thinking of?
     
    Athelwulf, Aug 28, 2006
    #41

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  3. spuriousmonkey

    spuriousmonkey Banned Banned

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    Maybe for the Swedish related languages. Not for Finnish.


    Minä puhun Suomea.
    Sinä puhut Suomea.
    Hän puhuu Suomean (no difference between him and her)
    Me puhumme Suomea.
    etc.

    The nice thing about Finnish however is that you pronounce it exacly how it is written. It's also the difficult thing, because you have to be very precise in your pronounciation.
     
    spuriousmonkey, Aug 28, 2006
    #42

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  5. The Devil Inside

    The Devil Inside Banned Banned

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    read it again, more closely.

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    i said that i am NOT fluent in russian...im trying, though!
     
    The Devil Inside, Aug 28, 2006
    #43

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  7. The Devil Inside

    The Devil Inside Banned Banned

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    my lady and i just registered this morning for chinese classes this autumn, at your behest.

    and i promise to smoke less weed before i go.

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    The Devil Inside, Aug 28, 2006
    #44
  8. domesticated om

    domesticated om Stickler for details Valued Senior Member

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    In what context? It's just another pattern/dialect. It doesn't follow the rules set by communication in proper English, so it wouldn't really belong in this discussion.

    I was about to compare it to cajun-speak, but someone at wikipedia already did it:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English
     
    domesticated om, Aug 28, 2006
    #45
  9. nubianconcubine

    nubianconcubine ...observing... Registered Senior Member

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    hey thanks for the link! i was actually being playful.

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    most of the people who speak it actually justify using it as an official dialect of the english language. i was wondering if it actually had a chance at becoming recognized since so many people actually use it. kind of like "wanna" and "ain't". i wanted to know what you guys thought about that.

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    nubianconcubine, Aug 28, 2006
    #46
  10. Fraggle Rocker

    Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Good for them.
    Put that one on hold. The latest research has found a list of about fifty cognates in all the "Eurasiatic" languages. It could only be done with massively parallel computer processing, with sixty thousand years of phonetic and vocabulary shifts. Next project is to find some with the other family, the sub-Saharan African languages. If it's discovered that language arose before the human diaspora rather than independently in separated populations, it will suggest that language was the key technology that made the planning and execution of that diaspora possible. No, I haven't got a URL for that and I can't imagine why I didn't bookmark it. I must have read it in one of those magazines only dentists subscribe to.
    And they have an interesting effect on the speakers. In Chinese it's very difficult to express how you feel with your tone of voice, because the tones are phonemic. You can talk louder or you can shift your entire spectrum to a higher or lower pitch, but you can't get those "subtle" tones that express feelings--you know, the ones only women really understand. You have to actually say what you mean! What a concept.
    It has nouns and verbs, which are all we need, and it shares the subject-verb-object order that makes at least anglophones comfortable. English speakers tend to think of the stative verbs as adjectives since they precede their nouns, an additional comfort.
    Only academic words. If you try to pick up a Slavic language by conversational immersion, it will be a long time before you run into words like respublik, which is a borrowing rather than a cognate anyway.
    I guarantee that will be replaced before this century is over. The Vietnamese and Koreans already did it. The Japanese will probably be the last holdouts. They love tradition, especially if it makes life just a tiny bit more difficult.
    Yes, but it's not an inflection, it's a word. I haven't got a dictionary handy but it means something like "group."
    I didn't learn one for "it." The one for "she" is "he" with the ren ("person") radical replaced by nyu ("female"). It is strictly a device of formal writing and has no analog in the spoken language.
    And that is the beauty of Chinese. If the person is important, you just say the pronoun (or just repeat the key words in its original referent) instead of remembering how to conjugate a verb. The same with tense. If you really need to make it clear that the action took place yesterday, you just say "yesterday," which has only two syllables in Chinese.
    Yes. Most of us aren't even conscious of aspiration so it's a difficult point to make.

    Compare the T in "top" with the T in "stop." Notice the little puff of air in "top." Or if you don't feel it, hold a tissue in front of your mouth and you'll see it. The Indic peoples can do that with a D. Hardly any of us can.

    In both dharma and buddha, there should be a puff of air after the D. You can do it with buddha by saying it slowly as BOOD-HAH, but I bet you can't do it with dharma.
     
    Fraggle Rocker, Aug 28, 2006
    #47
  11. Athelwulf

    Athelwulf Rest in peace Kurt... Registered Senior Member

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    I read the post in question several times before I responded to it, trying to make sense of it, but I didn't see the "nt" at the end of "wouldnt". Perhaps start using apostrophes, and my brain won't blend your words together like it did.

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    Someone mentioned Cajun. I'd love to learn to speak some Cajun French (after learning Parisian, perhaps). As for English, I'd love to be able to speak British and Australian English pretty convincingly. I'm fascinated by the Yorkshire accent, as well as Jamaican Creole.

    Which accents and dialects are you guys interested in?
     
    Athelwulf, Aug 28, 2006
    #48
  12. Athelwulf

    Athelwulf Rest in peace Kurt... Registered Senior Member

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    Oh yeah, I heard about that and considered making a passing mention of it. I just thought it went without saying.

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    I hadn't heard about that before.

    I think I once bookmarked a site talking about a proposed language superfamily along the lines of what you mention. I remember following a link from there and seeing a chart comparing words for 'one', 'finger', and 'to point' from several language families. But since then I did stuff to my computer, and the original file for my bookmarks that it would be on is stuffed away in some folder. I'll look for the bookmark later, if I remember.

    I had always thought it got attatched to the word as an inflection because I saw it written that way in pinyin. I guess I should work harder to forget about how Indo-European languages work, eh?

    I believe it uses the 'cow' radical.
     
    Athelwulf, Aug 29, 2006
    #49
  13. The Devil Inside

    The Devil Inside Banned Banned

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    i am vehemently opposed to my shift key....in case you never noticed.
     
    The Devil Inside, Aug 29, 2006
    #50
  14. Athelwulf

    Athelwulf Rest in peace Kurt... Registered Senior Member

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    There is no need for the Shift key to get the apostrophe... :bugeye:
     
    Athelwulf, Aug 29, 2006
    #51
  15. hug-a-tree

    hug-a-tree Live the life Registered Senior Member

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    this is really bad

    thought
    though
    tough

    all "ough" but different sounds
     
    hug-a-tree, Aug 29, 2006
    #52
  16. The Devil Inside

    The Devil Inside Banned Banned

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    shut up.

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    The Devil Inside, Aug 29, 2006
    #53
  17. Athelwulf

    Athelwulf Rest in peace Kurt... Registered Senior Member

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    Through. (oo)
    Plough. (ow)
    McGloughlin. (off)
    Edinburough. (g)
    Slough. (uff)
    Bought. (aw)
    Cough. (off)
    Hiccough. (up)
     
    Athelwulf, Aug 29, 2006
    #54
  18. Fraggle Rocker

    Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    How about lough (ock). But is it fair to include Scots dialect? Over here we pronounce McGloughlin like McLachlan, no matter how it's spelled, which gives us another one, (akh). But we spell it "hiccup" so we lose one. And we thought Edinborough was (o) just like the boroughs of New York City.
     
    Fraggle Rocker, Aug 29, 2006
    #55
  19. perplexity

    perplexity Banned Banned

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    Edinburgh.

    ---
     
    perplexity, Sep 7, 2006
    #56
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